The present disclosure relates to beds that are used in healthcare facilities and that have bed exit alert or alarm systems. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to beds having an alarm silence function that can be used to silence an audible alarm.
Hospital beds having bed exit alarms are known. Such beds typically have a local alarm, such as a buzzer or beeper, that sounds when the bed exit alarm is armed or enabled and the patient gets out of bed. Some such beds may also be configured to send an alert message to a nurse call system so that a nurse at a master station and/or caregivers carrying wireless communication devices, are alerted to the bed exit alarm condition. Many of the prior art beds also have an alarm silence button that, when pressed, turns off the bed exit alarm function of the bed and also stops an audible alarm, such as a beeper or buzzer, from sounding. Pressing the alarm silence button also may cancel the alert in the nurse call system.
In a typical scenario, when the bed exit alarm system is enabled with a patient on the bed, the alarm will sound when the patient gets out of the bed such as to go to the bathroom, for example. A caregiver will respond to the alarm, see that the patient is simply going to the bathroom, and then press the alarm silence button. Once the patient has finished going to the bathroom, the caregiver may even assist the patient in getting back into bed. However, on some occasions, caregivers forget to turn the bed exit alarm system back on. That is, a caregiver may, on occasion, forget to re-enable the alarm. Thus, the next time that the patient decides to get out of bed, no bed exit alarm sounds and no bed exit alert message is sent to the nurse call system.